Roughly, the reasons are that she has demonstrated an independent streak in her role as Fed vice chair, is big on preparation and prefers deliberate thinking to a “manic” problem-solving approach, and is more worried about unemployment right now than about fighting asset bubbles.

But if Irwin’s column accurately reflects the sophistication of the thinking inside the Obama administration, then it would seem to confirm what we originally thought: the White House, whether because of laziness or an insulated process, just hasn’t done anything close to the appropriate diligence on what the moment requires from a new Fed chair. …

Felix Salmon:

The White House’s anti-Yellen sexism, cont.: Neil Irwin is not going to have made many friends in the White House with today’s piece on the problems the Obama administration has with Janet Yellen. It makes the White House economic team seem insular, sexist, and deeply mistaken about what the right and proper role of the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board should be. Worse, there’s every reason to believe that Irwin’s piece is entirely accurate.

Irwin enumerates three main reasons why the White House is underwhelmed with Yellen. The first is the “team player” attack: Yellen is an independent thinker more than she is a loyal deputy to Bernanke. And because she was 3,000 miles away from the action during the financial crisis (she was running the San Francisco Fed), she never became part of the boys’ club which was making enormous decisions on a daily basis in the fall of 2008.

As Irwin puts it, “she was on the outside looking in regarding some of the seat-of-the-pants decisions that were being made over how to rescue the American economy” — and the people who made those decisions are the exact same people who are advising Obama on whom to nominate as Fed chair. They have all worked closely with Summers, they enjoy the way he makes decisions, and they’ve all been through various crises with each other.

The “team player” argument, then, is basically the “one of us” argument, thinly disguised. Which is the first place that the sexism comes in: everybody named as being part of the “team” (Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Bill Dudley, Don Kohn, Kevin Warsh, Gene Sperling) is undeniably male — and, what’s more, the kind of male who takes great pride in his own intelligence, and loves it when the world knows just how smart he is.

But it gets worse…

Brad DeLong:

Neil Irwin Listens to Footsteps in the Topkapi Palace: Federal Reserve Succession Weblogging: … I am not at all sure that what Neil has heard is what the White House staff meant for him to hear. But I must say that I find my line–that either would be an excellent choice, but that I have a small preference for Summers over Yellen because if we wind up in the lower tail of the outcomes distribution we would rather have a central banker not bound by a perhaps-outdated past Fed consensus–more convincing.

Amar Bhidé:

Wanted: A Boring Leader for the Fed: The debate over who should succeed Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, has been exceptionally personality-driven. Supporters and opponents of the two leading contenders — Lawrence H. Summers … and Janet L. Yellen … have been feuding in public. …

What all sides seem to misunderstand, however, is the proper nature of the central bank’s role in the economy. Instead of casting about for a new maestro, we need to return the Fed to dullness and its chairman to obscurity. …

The Fed’s chairmen in recent decades have been eminently qualified individuals of undisputed probity. But they are humans, too, whose blind spots, egos and potential conflicts of interest — Mr. Greenspan has had a lucrative post-Fed career giving speeches and advice — raise real concerns about hubris, even bias. …

Perhaps the most important qualification for the next Fed leader is one all too rare in Washington: humility.

Part I.
Yellen ; Wall Street`s cookie Girl Scoot , easy on Interest rates , forget about inflation ever ready for QE IV , QE V .. and so on… as needed(Just put the numbers behind QE ) , forget about US Current Account deficit or ever growing 4 trillion( with T ) Federal Reserve Balance Sheet , who cares as long as Chinese and Japanese and others ( * ) willing to buy US Bonds and Treasury Securities (not willing to dump yet..!) , keep on expanding the Federal Balance Sheet , as long as Oil (world energy)Prices are pegged to the “Reserve Currency Dollar” , and Euro currency hardly any competitor currency to the good old Dollar ; but a complete failure as is since its creation in 2001 and Poor PIIGS will be burden to Germanys economy until someone realizes that something really going on wrong with this Eurozone deal (Lots of Crickets and few Ants ) so to speak and Euro Currency as foster child who wants to be `another` reserve currency …
Please Cont .part II

Part II..
And until someone also realizes that US treasury and Federal Reserve Balance Sheet too much Depth Ridden and Risky and getting riskier for the World Economy and the Dollar is getting too risky to be `reserve currency`. ( As we had seen since late 2008 the `ever creative derivative securitization` scandals with no mathematical fundamentals to depend on to calculate real risk which effectively and surely doomed as we all saw sadly )..
So the bottom line is ; White House should be smart and prudent enough and well advised in their Federal Reserve candidate selection by seeing the overall `big picture` of world economy in the future ; rather than yielding on the Cookie Girls Scoot of Wall Street hardly sees anything by advocating money polices doomed to fail eventually . The Prudence should be the guide in selection of the candidate when especially you are Depth Ridden up to the nose …. http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-char… ( * )List of countries US Bonds and Treasuries and their amounts…